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Southwestern Historical Quarterly

JOHN RICE JONESGAYLE TALBOTIt has ever been a matter of much pride to native Texans thatthe men who came with and followed Stephen F. Austin into thevirgin valleys of the Colorado and the Brazos were almost withoutexception individuals of uncommon worth and ambition. Theplans they laid, the public documents they framed and the sacri-fices they so boldly made upon every battle field proved them tobe of the better stuff. History, yet incomplete, is adding fromwhatever source the dole of credit due them.Among those pre-Republic pioneers who played a modest, yetnoteworthy, part was John Rice Jones, of whom but little hasbeen written. His timely labors would suggest more than pass-ing mention, for his was the hand that penned the initial decla-ration against Mexican unfairness at San Felipe on July 14,1835, and he later became the first Postmaster General of theRepublic of Texas and one of the executors of the estate of Wil-liam Barrett Travis. He was born in Kaskaskia, Illinois (thenNorthwest Territory), January 8, 1792, a son of Judge JohnRice Jones and Mary Barger Jones, and came to Texas in 1831,after having served in the war of 1812 under Captain HenryDodge, along with his brothers, Adolphus and Myers F. Jones,the two last named later moving to Texas and playing worthyparts, as elsewhere shown. Soon after arriving in Texas, JohnRice Jones received under headright a league of land in Fayettecounty and a labor of land in Brazoria county, but political andarmy history seems to have placed his residence as at San Felipe,although he died in Fayette county in 1845, and was buried near"Fairyland Farm," the original headright. He was marriedtwice, the first time to a daughter of Major James Hawkins, ofMissouri, in 1818, who died at Velasco soon after San Jacinto,while her husband was in office under the administration of Presi-dent Burnet during Santa Anna's incarceration there. Hissecond wife was Miss Sarah Fidelia Heard, a sister of CaptainWilliam J. E. Heard, who rendered service in the battle of SanJacinto in command of Company L, Texas volunteers. For a